


Alive

by Slipperyl3oy (Gandalfgirl579)



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Asrian, Body Horror, F/M, Gothic, Horror, M/M, Magic, Mild Gore, Necromancy, Slow Burn, Victorian, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-11 13:13:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16476227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gandalfgirl579/pseuds/Slipperyl3oy
Summary: Behind the lovely brick façade of the cottage on Brompton Road lived a handsome gentleman of rather uncommon ability. Before the fireplace, at the gentleman's behest, sat an undertaker, sewing up the torn throat of a dead woman. She shuddered when the needle pierced her skin.A Victorian AU, in which Asra is an amateur necromancer, Errol is his first successful resurrection, and Julian is an undertaker who finds himself in charge of the newly-revived Errol's "maintenance."Primarily asrian, with a side of Asra x Errol x Julian and all its combinations.





	1. Chapter 1

_It's alive_! was a bit too dramatic, Asra thought, and so he simply smiled quietly to himself as his dead lover shivered back to life on the cold copper table.

All around her lovely corpse, his equipment sprawled: Bowls of liquids and bowls of solids and bowls of fresh meat that had somehow spoiled in the ten minutes the ritual had taken. 

It had been ten minutes, hadn't it? 

Asra spared a glance up at the tower room's single window. On the other side of the leaded, wavy glass, the sky was a rather remarkable shade of crimson. _Sailors take warning_ , he thought wryly. _Necromancers take pride_.

He'd begun the ritual at sundown, just as the moon was peeking her pale, round face over the myriad chimneys that made up the smoke-stained London skyline. The stars had not yet shown themselves. 

Had it truly taken all night?

The scent seemed to say so, and Asra wrinkled his nose. 

That smell was made nearly tolerable by the arrangement of herbs laid in a circle around the table. Strangely, some of them seemed to have been burned. The rosemary was singed, the verbena flowers withered into little balls, the laurel branches charred beyond recognition. Had there been a fire? There was no smell of ash on the air, nor any trace of soot on the splintery wood of the floor.

Within the circle of herbs, however, the odor of formaldehyde and the beginnings of rot were overpowering.

Just the same, Asra stepped in, watching as she shuddered on the cold table, shoulders trembling, hands fisted, eyes squeezed shut, crinkling the grayed skin of her brow.

Was she in pain?

The thought itself was painful, and very softly, Asra asked, "Errol?"

It was the sound of his voice that set her eyes to fluttering open.

They were the same honey-gold that they'd always been, though they were glassy and sunken deep into her skull. They seemed withered, almost, too small for her pallid face. They'd been doe-like once, wide and full of yearning and curiosity and fire, but there was an emptiness to them now, and Asra stepped back when they met his.

Her hair, once so soft and lustrous, was brittle now, the strands snapping as she turned her head to regard him with those hollow eyes. Even the color had changed, shifting from warm auburn to a flat, dirty brown, the strands mingling with shimmering silver spider webs. Were there spiders still hiding inside her?

Her hands were more delicate than ever, spindly and deathly pale, the skin tightening around her knobby knuckles as they slowly clenched and unclenched at her sides. There was grave dirt beneath her manicured fingernails, and the lace gloves she had worn upon her burial had all but disintegrated.

Her lips, chapped and still troublingly bluish, parted on a shuddering gasp. A soft rumble escaped her throat, and she reached one pale, shaky hand out in his direction, fingers splayed. She still seemed stiff, rigor mortis still solidifying her joints. 

It would be a few days before she was fully alive, the book had said, if his translations were accurate. _The crawl out of the grave is far more difficult than the leap into it._

"Aaahhh…" What remained of her voice was a low mixture of a Rottweiler's growl and a kitten's purr, soft and shaky and thoroughly inhuman. Her eyes were wide, her bluish lower lip trembling. "Aaahhhssssss…"

_Asra_. 

She was trying to say his name, to call him to her side, even after so long. Of course. 

Taking her clammy, slender hand in his, Asra smiled.

_She was alive_. 

After nearly a month of failed experiments, after two long, cold years in the grave, _Errol Pyralis was **alive**_.


	2. Chapter 2

Holding Errol's hand across the cloth-draped dining room table, Asra shuddered. 

Her skin was cool and clammy to the touch, still pulled too tightly over delicate bone, but there was something utterly _right_ about it. 

He had missed her so much.

He'd hardly had a reason for living with her gone.

He'd tried, several times over, once almost successfully, to follow her.

She seemed to catch onto his thoughts, glancing up with her hollow eyes and making a soft keening sound in the back of her throat. The look on her face almost was almost pitying, almost sorrowful. Her brows were drawn together, the crepe-like skin of her forehead wrinkling just the slightest bit, her winter-chapped lips parted as if she meant to speak. 

Softly, Asra asked, "Did you have any idea how much I wanted you?"

Catching his eyes with hers, clearly hesitant, Errol nodded. 

"Did you..." A sigh. His hand tightened around hers, a bit disturbed at how stiff the flesh still was. It had been two days already; The rigor mortis should have worn off already. Had the ritual been done incorrectly? Asra ignored that question. There was a far more important question lingering at the tip of his tongue, and he asked it instead: "Did you feel the same?"

Cautious, Errol bit at her still-bluish lower lip, her sunken eyes darting away. 

His brow furrowing, Asra leaned forward in an attempt to catch her gaze again, asking, " _Errol_?"

Still she refused to look at him. 

"Errol, please look at me." 

She just shook her head. 

Slowly, softly, Asra asked, "You never felt the same, did you?" 

Errol flinched in the face of that question. For a moment, _just a moment_ , she let her eyes dart up to meet Asra's. They quickly retreated. That honey-gold gaze was cast out the window, watching as snow flurried down upon the city. She had always loved the snow, but there was no joy in her eyes, nor on her face.

When he stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, she spared a glance down at it, and Asra found himself mirroring her with clouded eyes.

Her skin was still grayed, and paper-thin, and Asra imagined even the shallowest scratch of a quill would rip her open. Just the slightest press of his fingertips would set violet bruises to blooming just beneath her skin. The slightest prick of a pin could easily rupture her skin, pop her open like an overfilled balloon. The dull brass letter-opener he kept upstairs in his office could cut her to ribbons with ease, and release the chemicals and the worms and the rot filling her up into the open air. 

The state of her would have to be dealt with, and quickly. 

At long last, he pulled away, standing and saying, "Wait here." 

He doubted she had anywhere else to go.

Stepping through the swinging door just behind the table he had shared with her, Asra came into the many-windowed brightness of the kitchen. That light was too much for his stinging eyes, and for a moment, he paused, his hands resting at the edge of the butcher block countertop as a weary sigh slipped past his lips.

_Errol had known_. 

She had known how he felt, and she hadn't felt the same.

That didn't matter now, though, Asra suddenly, stubbornly thought. This was his second chance. This time around, he would win her heart. _He would_. 

So he hoped, at least.

He sighed again, heavier this time, breathing deep the comforting scents of tea and fresh milk and hearth smoke and his only servant's famous beef stew. With her nowhere to be seen, Asra called out, his voice haggard, "Faust?"

"Coming!" There was a great _thunk_ from upstairs before Faust's footsteps skittered over the ceiling and down the stairs, footfalls landing light on the bare wood. When she rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen, she raised a brow at Asra immediately, looking concerned.

"I need to ask a favor of you."

She seemed to have other things on her mind, though, stepping closer to him and pressing her little hands to his cheeks. Softly, she asked, "What's wrong?" She thumbed away his tears. "She made you cry?"

"She didn't _make me_." Asra gently took hold of Faust's wrists, easing her hands away from his face. "Everyone cries now and then."

"You've done nothing but cry since she died," Faust said. "And since she's come back, you've done nothing but cry."

" _Faust_." It was a plea. "I need to ask a favor of you."

Faust didn't look convinced, pressing her lips together. Still looking quite troubled, she pulled away, asking, "What is it?"

"I need you to look after Errol for a bit."

Faust looked terrified by the suggestion. 

"Come now, Faust." Asra met her curiously red eyes. "There's no one else I would trust with her."

Softly, shamefully, Faust said, "I don't want to."

"You've always liked her."

"I liked _Errol_ ," Faust agreed, quietly, wrapping her arms around herself, her gaze falling to the floor. "But that thing in there isn't her. It isn't natural." She bit at her lip. "It's magic, I think."

"There's no such thing as magic, Faust." Asra was still relatively sure of it, at least. 

"Says the man with a dead woman sitting at his dining room table."

Asra sighed at that, saying, "Just keep watch over her for a while, will you?" When Faust nodded in hesitant consent, he continued. "I shouldn't be out terribbly long. A few hours, at the very most."

Shrinking into herself, Faust leaned onto the doorjamb, looking puzzled and curious and still just the slightest bit concerned. "Where are you going?" she asked. It was a distraction tactic, and they both knew it.

"I'm going to look for help."

Suddenly that concern was all to be seen on Faust's face again, and she asked, "Help with what?"

Though he was loath to admit it, Asra softly replied, "Errol is falling apart."

"What did you expect?" Faust asked, her voice soft and conspiratorial. "She's _dead_."

Ignoring the barb, Asra said, "I'm going to find an undertaker, and see if they can help."

Pursing her lips, Faust darted her eyes over Asra's shoulder, gazing intently at the door, which led back into the combination living-dining room, where Errol was likely still sitting, unmoving, unblinking, unbreathing. "Will they see her?"

"I'm not certain," Asra confessed, "but I need to try, at the very least. She deserves that much. And I can't just leave her the way she is."

"True enough." Chewing on her inside of her cheek, Faust said, "That one at the East End might do it. He takes strange cases, and he's supposed to be the best."

He knew exactly who she meant, though he was hesitant to even speak the name. " _Devorak_." It tasted foul. "Down in Spitalfields. I believe he's made shop on Cheshire Street." The thought of him sent Asra's skin to crawling, and the sensation was strangely pleasant, still familiar. Asra had missed it. "I hear he's highly disreputable."

"So've I." To Faust, however, that seemed almost a good thing. "He's as unscrupulous as they come, I've heard." There was something like mischief in her voice. "He hides and destroys corpses for killers, he works on the deformed and the homeless, and he doesn't even require monetary payment for it. Scotch'll do, I've heard." She gave Asra a mischeivous little smile. "Or flesh." 

It was off-putting, to say the least, but what else was there to do? Devorak was said to be the best in the business when it came to peculiar cases. Asra was certain that Errol was the strangest case of all, even for a man of Devorak's background. Who else was there to turn to? Asra turned to the door behind him, gesturing for Faust to follow him back into the dining room. 

Errol still sat at the table, twisting her wedding ring around her finger. The gold seemed too bright against the sickly pallor of her skin, glittering in the yellowish glow of the midmorning sun.

"Errol?" 

She granted him only the barest of glances.

"I'm going to be gone for a while, darling." Her eyes were already on the ring again. He would have to find a way to spirit it away when she wasn't looking. When she was asleep, perhaps. Would she need sleep? He hadn't seen anything in the book about it. "I'm going to leave you with Faust for a few hours. Is that all right?"

Errol forced a smile. She had adored Faust before. Had that changed?

Tossing a nervous nod over to Faust, who flashed her own forced smile back at him, Asra went through the door at the front of the room, in the opposite direction from that whence he had come.

Grabbing his coat from the rack in the foyer, he stepped out into the November chill, shivering as he adjusted to the cold and the wind and the gentle fall of snow on the cobblestone streets. It had been Hell breaking into the mortsafe and digging Errol up in such weather, and his hands were still blistered, despite the month that had passed since then. Asra shuddered, pulling the tweed of his coat tighter around himself. It was too cold to walk.

Hailing a carriage, he called up his directions to the driver, and they were off. 

Far from Asra's posh little home at Knightsbridge, one Julian Devorak, Undertaker kept shop deep in the slums of Spitalfields. The little mortuary was hardly more than a hole in an ugly brick wall along Cheshire Street, and Asra hesitantly knocked on the splintered wood of the door.

No answer came.

Another knock, louder this time, and Asra frowned, stuffing his leather-gloved hands deep into the pockets of his coat. How rude. It was far too chilly to keep a guest waiting, particularly when that guest was a potential customer. Such behavior was bad for business.

He was in the middle of his third succession of knocks when the weathered door swung inward, and a pretty young thing stepped out of the shop. _Portia_. Asra swallowed nervously.

Once the door quietly closed behind her, she sighed, " _Do you mind_?"

"Sorry?"

"There's a wake being held inside, they don't need to-- Oh." Her pretty eyes went hard. "Asra."

"I'm terribly sorry." He was, truly. "I didn't--"

Portia pointed a bloody-gloved finger toward a sign hanging on the brick wall beside the door. In hand-scrawled script, it read, _Quiet Please_.

"Oh! Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry, I--" 

"You said that already."

Asra chafed. Then he cleared his throat, asking, "Where can I find the owner of this establishment?"

Above their heads, the sign reading _Devorak, Undertaker_ swayed in the wind, the brass faded and worn, the hinges that held it up squeaking with the movements, in need of oil. 

"Inside." The cold tone didn't suit Portia at all, and Asra found himself shivering in its wake. Leaning against the doorjamb, she crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want?"

Steeling himself, Asra half-lied, "I need help with a corpse."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Faust! And Portia! My girls! :D

**Author's Note:**

> I am so excited for this fic! And I'm posting the prologue on Halloween! How perfect!
> 
> As always, I must mention that I go by [Slipperyl3oy](http://slipperyl3oy.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr, and I'm totally open to taking questions and comments and requests and prompts there! :) Hit me up!


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